Quantifying Software
Reliability and Readiness

by: Jack Olivieri and Abbaya
Asthana

Tuesday December 15,
2009

As the
industry moves to more mature software
processes (e.g., CMMI) there is increased need
to adopt more rigorous, sophisticated (i.e.,
quantitative) metrics. While quantitative
product readiness criteria are often used for
business cases and related areas, software
readiness is often assessed more subjectively
& qualitatively. Quite often there is no
explicit linkage to original performance and
reliability requirements for the software. The
criteria are primarily process-oriented (versus
product oriented) and/or subjective. Such an
approach to deciding software readiness
increases the risk of poor field performance
and unhappy customers. Unfortunately, creating
meaningful and useful quantitative in-process
metrics for software development has been
notoriously difficult.

This
presentation describes novel and quantitative
software readiness criteria to support
objective and effective decision-making at
product shipment. The method organizes and
streamlines existing quality and reliability
data into a simple metric and visualizations
that are applicable across products and
releases. The methodology amalgamates two
schools of thoughts in quantitative terms:
product and process parameters that have been
adequately represented to formalize the
software readiness index. Parameters from all
aspects of software development life cycle
(e.g., requirements, project management &
resources, development & testing, audits
& assessments, stability and reliability,
and technical documentation) that could impact
the readiness index are
considered.

Abhaya
Asthana is a Bell
Labs Fellow with Alcatel-Lucent where he has
performed R&D in the area of End to End
system & solutions, reliability
engineering, converged network systems,
computer architecture, IMS, IPTV, wireless
systems, optical networks and VLSI design. He
led the design of VLSI systems at INTEL from
1982-1985 and was on the faculty of IIT Kanpur
in 1984. Dr. Asthana received his Bachelor's
degree in Electrical engineering from I.I.T.
Kanpur in 1970, and his Doctorate degree from
Tulane University in 1974.

Jack
Olivieri is a Lead
Multi-Discipline System Engineer with the MITRE
Corporation in the Command and Control Center
(C2C) where he is responsible for support of
reliability specification and analyses efforts
on various defense projects for the Air Force.
Previously, he worked at Alcatel-Lucent from
1998-2009 as a Reliability Tech Manager and
performed DFR activities on ATM/IP switches,
media gateways, and optical platforms. He holds
a BA in Mathematics from Boston College and an
M.S.S.E. from the University of
Massachusetts.

Locations:

The presentation will originate at the
Bedford facility, with video
tele-conferencing (VTC)
between:

Eatontown will not participate this
month.Note the new
building and room at the
FDA.

MITRE, room 0N100

7515 Colshire
Drive

McLean, VA
22102

host: Scott
Ankrum

cell: 240-731-7581

FDA, Bld
66, room G512

10903 New Hampshire
Ave

Silver
Spring, MD 20993host: James
Simpson

cell: 240-429-3912

MITRE, room
1002

260 Industrial Way
West

Eatontown, NJ 07724

host: Richard
Eng

cell: 703-201-9112

MITRE, room 1M306

202 Burlington Rd (Rt.
62)

Bedford, MA
01730

host: Tim Rice

cell: 978-758-2704

If you can host
another location via VTC, please contact
Scott Ankrum (below)

Note:Beginning with the October
meeting, there will no longer be a free
(800) dial-in number for remote users.We will
experiment with Skype.Please
provide your Skype ID in the telephone field
when registering.